A most unfortunate illusion, and I am troubled about her — I shall always be troubled about her.

  But you are betrothed to her?

  God help me, so I am!

  What are you going to do now?

  What am I going to do? I am — yes, I am going to obey the commandment of Nature. Accident and error and illusion have betrothed me to the wrong woman, but must I hold to her after I have found out that I do not love her? No! she is sweet and loving, and I have no fault to find with her, but I must obey the law of my heart, and who shall judge me if I do that?

  But what about the law of the land — you have signed a contract to marry Thora?

  Even so, is marriage like any other worldly transaction? Are you bound to go on merely because you have begun? Can human hearts be dealt with like so much merchandise?

  So you do not intend to marry Thora?

  I cannot — it is impossible — now that her sister has appeared before me I see too well I do not love her.

  But she loves you!

  That is the pity of it. Poor Thora!

  She thinks you are slipping away from her?

  It is very pitiful — I see how I have made her suffer.

  What will happen if you leave her altogether?

  Her heart will break — her tender, sweet, child heart will break.

  Can you break Thora’s heart?

  No, no, no! Better break my own!

  Then what are you going to do?

  I must go on with the marriage. I see now that I must — it is my duty — there is no help for it.

  Wait! There is something you have not thought about.

  If you go on with your contract and marry Thora, you must be prepared to live her life.

  I know! I know! and I am not fit for it! Good or bad I am not fit for it!

  But if you break your contract, and do not marry Thora, you may live the life of Helga.

  Yes, yes, and I am fitted for that life above everything else. It thrills me, it inspires me, it lifts me up.

  The one is the lower life, while the other is the higher life?

  I cannot bear to think of it.

  You know that if you marry Thora you condemn yourself for ever to the lower life, and give up all hope and all thought of the higher one?

  Don’t torture! Don’t torture me!

  But the higher life will be a life consecrated to self, whereas the lower life will be a life devoted to self-sacrifice — which is it to be?

  That settles it — I must go on with the contract, whatever the consequences.

  When Oscar awoke in the morning from his restless sleep he thought he saw his way clearly. There was only one solution of the hard problem of his iron destiny — he must sacrifice himself! He was betrothed to Thora, and he must go on with the marriage. He loved Helga, but he must tear her out of his heart. He wished to be a musician, and to live the higher life, but he must be content with the lower life and do his duty.

  A few irresistible pangs of regret, a few tears which he could not quite keep back, and then, feeling a certain satisfaction with himself, a certain pride in his self-sacrifice, Oscar went early to his work.

  It was the autumn caravan time, when the farmers come with the last of the year’s tallow and wool to have their accounts made up and settled. The offices and warehouses were like a market-place, and there was work for everybody. Oscar threw himself into the day’s doings with astonishing energy, and when the Factor returned from breakfast, he bantered him on his industry. “Better late than never though,” said the Factor, “and a good day in the autumn is worth two in the spring.”

  Oscar spent the morning in the office helping at the accounts. His part was to reconcile the farmers to their balances, for many of them were dissatisfied, and nearly all were in the Factor’s debt. Some grumbled at the rate they received for their produce, others at the price they paid for foreign goods. Oscar’s task was to persuade, cajole, and comfort them, and finally to draft the notes of hand on the bankers with which they discharged their debts. He felt mean and miserable.

  Towards noon Helga sent a messenger to say that she hoped to rehearse some of the new music in the cathedral in the afternoon and to ask if Oscar would go with her. He answered that he could not, business was pressing, and he must stick to his work. It cost him a pang to send back this answer, but he had made his bed and he meant to lie on it.

  He spent the afternoon in the warehouse where the produce brought by the farmers was weighed and stacked away for the winter. The odour of the tallow and wool, mingling with the smell of the men’s clothes and the reek of their bodies, made the atmosphere close and noisome, and to freshen the air Oscar ordered the big doors to be thrown open.

  All at once through the clear, crisp winter air outside came the sound of the organ being played in the cathedral, and that was the last drop in his cup. It was like a voice calling him out of the lower world he lived in to the higher one he yearned for. It was like Helga beckoning to him in his unblessed surroundings, and through the roll of the music he could see her face.

  For the first time Oscar was feeling bitterly about Thora, as if he were a prisoner and she were his jailor, when a man rode up to the warehouse door on a bright chestnut pony, with a line of pack ponies behind him. It was Magnus, and seeing him stand outside the counter which he had formerly stood within, Oscar felt some qualms of shame, and called him into the scalesman’s office.

  The interview between the brothers was brief and commonplace, but every simple word seemed to throb and scorch like a flame. Oscar asked how Magnus was getting on at the farm, and if he had good servants, and Magnus answered “Yes”; he had always been fond of farming, and for servants he had only the old ones, and everything was as before. Oscar asked if the Governor had made satisfactory arrangements, and Magnus said he had, that the farm was his own now on terms of tenancy, and was to become his property at the old people’s death.

  “And how are you getting on here?” asked Magnus.

  “I? Oh — pretty well, I think.”

  “You like the work?”

  “Yes — well — not to say like, perhaps; I never expected to do that, you know; but I’m all right, I think.”

  They had to pause, for the din in the warehouse was louder than usual — some of the farmers were squabbling with the scalesman.

  “And Thora?” said Magnus after a moment.

  “Thora? Oh, Thora is all right, too, I think. Yes, Thora is all right,” said Oscar.

  “Mother tells me she looks pale.”

  “Pale? Does she? I hadn’t noticed it. Perhaps she does though, the weather is getting cold.”

  There was a painful pause in their conversation, and while they waited Oscar could hear the organ in the cathedral breaking into the opening notes of his own anthem.

  “I hear that Helga has come home,” said Magnus.

  “Oh yes, Helga has come home,” said Oscar.

  “They say she is handsome.”

  “Handsome? Yes, she’s rather handsome, in fact, distinctly handsome — and musical — decidedly musical. Indeed she has grown to be a very attractive girl — very!”

  There was another awkward silence, in which the anthem pealed out over the jangling voices in the warehouse.

  “I suppose the wedding will be soon?” said Magnus.

  “The wedding? Well, to tell you the truth, Magnus, nothing has been fixed yet.”

  “Not yet?”

  “Nothing definite, I mean — no precise date. I don’t know why, but—”

  Oscar looked at his brother, and felt his tongue arrested.

  Magnus was calm, his eyes were quiet, and his voice was soft, but there was something in his face which brought back a terrible memory. It was the memory of the night of the betrothal, the last time they talked together, when Magnus had said, “If you ever neglect or desert her, or give her up for another woman, I’ll take her back — do you hear me? — I’ll take her back, and then, by God, I’ll kill you!”

  Oscar supped at the Factor’s house that night He was unusually solemn, and more than once during the meal Aunt Margret bantered him on his silence, but, at the end of it, while lighting a cigarette, he said —

  “Godfather, I hope you’ll consent to our having the wedding soon?”

  Thora, who had been looking pale and nervous, coloured up with a glad look, while Helga, who had been flushed and excited, grew white and rigid.

  “What do you call soon, Oscar — Easter?” asked the Factor.

  “Earlier, much earlier, say the middle of January at latest,” said Oscar.

  “But what does Thora say?”

  Rising from her seat, with brightening eyes and heaving bosom, Thora crossed over to Oscar and kissed him.

  “So that’s what Thora says!” laughed the Factor. “Very well, I’m willing! The middle of January let it be then, and fix the date between you.”

  Helga’s white face quivered. “So thats settled!” she cried, and leaping up she went across to the piano and began to play with great vigour. She played the wild “Ride of the Valkyries,” becoming faster and louder at every bar.

  Oscar was in torture, and he went home early. “What a mercy Helga does not know!” he thought. “If she did I could not trust myself even yet! And if she love me as I love her — Good God!”

  But Thora was very happy. Going to bed that night she thought, “How wrong I have been about Oscar; how cruelly, wickedly, shamefully wrong!”

  VII

  NEXT morning Oscar thought the battle was over, and his conscience had conquered, but the devil was not done with him yet. He had hardly settled to his work in the warehouse when a letter came from Helga saying —

  “The ice is perfect on the lake this morning, and in spite of business and every other botheration you must carry out your promise to take me to skate. Therefore come at two o’clock to the minute, and you will find me waiting to go with you.”

  It was the first letter he had received from Helga, and it seemed to burn his fingers. The scented notepaper and the free, bold handwriting gave him a physical thrill which he had never felt before.

  Should he go? His soul said “Certainly not! Why expose yourself to temptation, especially now, when you are as weak as water?” But his heart said, “You must! To make any difference in your attitude towards Helga would be to run the risk of betraying your secret. And what about the future — can you always run away like that?” His heart won, and at the appointed time he was walking up to the Factor’s.

  Helga was standing by the door at the top of the steps. She was dressed in pale blue serge, a short skirt exposing the long tanned boots, a jersey revealing the flexible lines of her shapely figure, and a white woollen cap, like a chain helmet, covering half her forehead and closing under her chin, leaving her vivid face bare and beautiful as a young nun’s in hood and bands.

  Oscar was beginning to doubt himself already, and he asked where was Thora.

  “I’m here,” said a cheerful voice from the hall, and Thora came to the door bright and happy, but bareheaded, and sewing a piece of moleskin cloth.

  “Not ready?” asked Oscar.

  “I’m not going, I can’t skate,” said Thora.

  “Then we’ll take a walk instead,” said Oscar. But Thora would not hear of it. Helga had set her heart on skating, and she had set her heart on something else — making a sleeve waistcoat for Hans, the sailor.

  “Well, if you really wish it,” said Oscar.

  “Really, truly! And I’ll have tea ready for you at five o’clock.”

  “We’ll be back before that,” said Oscar, and then he and Helga went swinging down the road.

  Helga, in her short skirt, walked with a spring, like a young horse in sharp weather, and Oscar, as he swung along by her side, sometimes touching her, felt his blood tingling, and every nerve tremblingly alive. This frightened him a little, and turning to look back, he saw Thora waving to them from the house, and said, “God bless her, the dear little soul!” And then Helga glanced at him sideways and laughed.

  The frost had filtered the air, and it was crisp and quivering with currents of electricity, which stimulated all their senses. Their voices crackled when they spoke, and when Helga laughed the sound was like that of dry sticks in a quick fire.

  “What are you laughing at, Helga?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and then they laughed together.

  The ice of the lake was glorious — a broad mirror black as ink, for there had been no snow yet, the water had frozen as by first intention, and through five fathoms they could see the stones and pebbles at the bottom.

  “What a pity Thora didn’t come,” said Oscar.

  “Isn’t it?” said Helga, and again she glanced at him sideways and laughed.

  They sat on the bank to put on their skates, and while Helga fumbled at her straps Oscar thought, “I must not, I will not!” But Helga looked across at him with a smile that seemed to ask a question, and at the next moment he was down on his knees in front of her, with one of her skates and one of her long tanned boots in his quivering hands.

  Oscar thought Helga’s skating was wonderful. It was divine, it was devilish, it intoxicated him, he could not trust himself to look at it alone, and seeing a number of skaters at the farther side of the lake, where there was an island of lava rocks, he said —

  “Let us go over to the others.”

  Hours passed, the exercise and the air warmed his blood, his tremors left him, and he forgot about Thora. At length the sun began to set over the sea in a flood of glory, and Oscar said, “Time to go home.”

  “Not yet,” said Helga, and they went round and round the island, sometimes apart, sometimes with clasped hands, sometimes side by side with arms interlaced across their breasts.

  The sun went down, and both sea and land became grey and cold, but still the tops of the mountains were golden.

  “Tea will be waiting,” said Oscar.

  “A little longer!” said Helga, and, nothing loth, Oscar went round and round with her again.

  The night came striding up from the plain behind, and somebody lit a fire on the island.

  “Too late for tea now,” said Helga, and once again Oscar went round and round with her. It seemed to him that Helga’s face flashed with electric flame as she swirled out of the darkness into the red glow from the fire, and back again into the darkness.

  One of the skaters started the Elf-song, others joined him, and then it was a scene of complete enchantment. The frost had laid its hand on the falls that fed the lake, and they were quiet; it had stroked the streams, and they were still; but if the voices of the waters were silent the voices of the skaters rippled and rang in the crisp night air:

  “Dance by night and dance by day,

  Life and Time will pass away;

  Love alone will last alway.”

  Oscar was enraptured. The humming of the skates, the swaying of the ice, the music of the singers, the heat, the glow, the sinuous movement, and above all the girl by his side, so bright, so beautiful, so full of life and laughter, carried away every sense, and flesh and blood were a-fire.

  Then the moon rose, a brilliant moon, and it was reflected full and round and white in the black mirror of the ice, with its streamers going off from it, as if it had been a comet that had fallen to the earth, and lay there at their feet.

  “Look! Let us cut across it,” cried Helga, and away they shot in the darkness, with the moon’s reflection receding as they followed it, until they came to the limit of the lake, and then the skaters and the fire and the singing were far behind them.

  “What a will-o’-the-wisp she is! I could catch you quicker than I could catch her!” said Oscar.

  “You couldn’t!”

  “I could!”

  “Do it, then!” cried Helga, and off she went, laughing at first, but afterwards silent yet breathing fast, and at last panting audibly while she twisted and turned to escape from him, until he came down on her at length with outstretched arms and a cry of “Done!” And then, before he knew what he was doing, he was clasping her to his breast, and she was clinging to him lest she should fall, and he was beating kiss after kiss upon her lips.

  At the next moment consciousness came back to him like an ice wind blowing in a furnace. His arms slackened away from Helga, and he said in a cold voice —

  “I beg your pardon, Helga. It was wrong of me. I am very sorry.”

  Helga laughed, a nervous, broken laugh which seemed to say, “Are you sure you are thinking of me?”

  “I am betrothed to your sister, and in less than two months I am to be married to her. I had no right to give way to my feelings like that,” said Oscar.

  The nervous, broken laugh came again, and it said, as plainly as words could speak, “Do you know what you are saying, Oscar?”

  Oscar trembled. He was like a man standing on the hot ground of the geysers, where the crust was thin and cracking under his feet.

  “Let us go home,” he said.

  “Take off my skates, then,” said Helga.

  She sat on the bank in the moonlight, and while he knelt at her feet and fumbled with the straps, his tongue went on with rambling sentences, but every word was tearing as at a torn tendon.

  “When a man has engaged himself to a good woman he ought to be true to her. It is his duty, and whatever the consequences to himself he ought to do it. If he has to suffer he must suffer, Helga, and if he has to sacrifice himself—”

  A faint sound stopped him. Helga was crying. Her crying seemed to search his innermost thoughts, and to say, “But have you any right to sacrifice me?”

  “Helga! Helga!” he cried, but she took no notice. She covered her face with her hands, and her crying became deep and long and inconsolable.

  He wished to comfort her, but he dare not do so. He remembered Thora and Magnus, the Factor, and his father, and his thoughts danced about his naked soul like demons.

  “Helga! Helga!” he cried again, but still Helga’s weeping continued. If it had gone on a moment longer he must have taken her in his arms again and told her that he loved her; that his love for her was above all laws, all illusions, all conventions; it was the commandment of Nature, and he was compelled to obey it; and they must fly from Iceland and never return, whatever the waste of ruined lives they had to leave behind them.

 

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